YOUR CART

Family & Friends,Our mission has a goal for each companionship to pass out 100 of Ilumina el Mundo (Light the World) advent calendars per week. This is an awesome way to come to know the Savior through 25 ways over 25 days this month. What better way to celebrate Christmas. I love it and encourage you all to participate. Go to Mormon.org for more details.

My Mom can attest to all of you that I am not a picky eater. I will seriously eat everything. However, I think I met my match here in Chile. Aji. I honestly don't know what the translation is for that word, but aji is a pepper. It comes in different types, some spicier than others. At one of our investigator´s houses, my Peruvian comp dared me to eat one with him, and we did it…. it wasn't super super bad, so we decided to step it up a notch and eat one of the hotter ones. The one the dude gave us, his name is Emilio by the way, was this super tiny red one. Holy cow… it was so bad. I put it in my mouth, and it wasn't that bad at all for ten seconds or so, then it all broke loose. I started sweating, I couldn't feel my tongue at all, tears were pouring out of my eyes. My companion told me my face was as red as a tomato. The people don´t mess around with their peppers here.

This week was different mostly because of Thanksgiving. This was the first Thanksgiving on the mission, so I did not know at all what to expect. It turned out to be super great though. Obviously, Thanksgiving is not a holiday in any other country except for America, so nobody does anything but the missionaries that are Americans. The Hermanas in our mission cooked us all apple pies which let me tell you was an early Christmas miracle. I love apple pie. Thanksgiving is such a great holiday. Not just because I really love apple pie, but I love how it makes you think. It makes you step back and look at all the things you have and realize how blessed you are. It makes you be more thankful for even the little moments in life. We all need to work on being more thankful because we really are blessed so so so much.

For example... Here are some ways I was blessed this week.

I RODE IN A CAR : The other day we got to ride in a taxi. That was probably the highlight of the week. Or at least one of them. Walking kind of gets old so to be able to ride in a car and feel like you are flying even though you are only going 20 miles an hour is something so sweet.

I CAPTURED A DOG IN CHURCH: I think this one is a blessing just because of how much I laughed. Somebody left the door open at church and a stray dog wandered into the church and I was given the assignment to capture it. This dog was huuuge. Not like Great Dane huge, it was just super fat. I had to pretty much tackle the poor thing and carry it out like I baby. I was laughing super, super hard.

I GOT TO SEE DOWNTOWN SANTIAGO : So, I am from America yeah? I am living in Chile legally on a VISA for 2 years. The other day I had to go to Centro (downtown), and to the immigration office to file my VISA reports. I went with one of my best friends from the mission and we got to see some cool stuff and explore a little while we waited. Downtown Santiago is so pretty (well I think so at least).

I GOT TO GO ON SPLITS : So every once in awhile we do splits and visit the people in a different part of the mission with the missionary that lives there. This past week we did them with the assistants to president of our mission, Elder Dominguez (from Sao Paulo Brazil) and Elder Mataitusi (from Redlands California). They both are super sweet and loving dudes. Elder Mataitusi and I visited a family that had the smallest and most poor house that I have seen in my whole life. They had a mattress on a dirt floor and a bedside table and a few stools. It hit me really hard to see just how happy these people were with absolutely nothing. Guys, they had nothing!! That was not important to them though because instead of focusing on what they didn´t have, they were just happy for what they did have. I love that kind of attitude. You learn so much here about being grateful.